I’ve learned that keywords for books uploaded to Kindle don’t have to be single words, the phrases vampire mystery, paranormal suspense would be counted as two keywords by the system if they’re separated by a comma, so with this in mind I’ve set about changing my keywords.
I’ve also been using a technique which involves typing keywords and phrases into the Kindle Store search box to find sub-categories with fewer books in them. (Fewer books, but falling under popular keyword phrases.) However, I’ve discovered something that may or may not be, let’s say . . . not quite cricket!
When you publish a book to Amazon you have to include the book’s title, and underneath the title box you’ll find the following warning from Amazon: Please enter the exact title only. Books submitted with extra words in this field will not be published.
The title is the one on the book’s cover, so with that in mind can someone explain how a book called Twin Wolf Unleashed appears on Amazon as: ROMANCE: PARANORMAL: Twin Wolf Unleashed (Menage BBW Shapeshifter WereWolves Romance) (New Adult Menage Short Stories)
And as if that’s not weird enough the keyword phrase I typed into the search box was ‘witches and demons;’ according to the book’s page there’s not a witch or a demon anywhere in sight, which suggests to me the author has included every paranormal word she can think of in the book’s keyword selection. (Remember a keyword can consist of any number of words to form a phrase if separated by a comma.)
I’ve sent a polite question to Amazon to see how this is possible. The above example is not a one off, there are hundreds of books titled this way, apparently unrelated to the keyword search.
Call me naive for thinking there are no authors out there gaming Amazon’s system to appear in the lists, but if it’s not allowed and it’s going on under Amazon’s noses and it’s preventing authentic attempts to list a book I get a bit pissed off over it.
And for the record, the way the above example is listed suggests Cassandra Evans, Lyra Daniels, Ella Hart, Eternal Love Books and fuck knows how many others are one and the same person using this system to push their ‘titles’ up to the top of the first page returned by the search.
I’ll update this post when/if I get a reply from Amazon.
The Opening Sentence 
To find the best categories, I use Kindle Spy and Kindle Samurai. Pretty wicked software that isn’t thaaat expensive. Let’s see if it all works in March! : D
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I’ll have to look into KindleSpy. The advice I’ve heard is to find categories with a lowish number of books, but not books that only sell a few copies a year (indicative of the category not being searched for.) Failing that I’ll start gaming the gamers and name my books after theirs.
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hehehe well, it’s a pretty great software that shows you which keyowrds are good (low competition and good turn over) and it shows the bad ones (less competition but almost zero turn over). But that’s kindle samurai
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And now I know something I didn’t know. This sounds more like gaming the system, which I’m not a subscriber of that point of view. Why can’t the writing stand on its own two feet? Why can’t writers write a good story without resorting to cheap parlor tricks? Oh, well. Such is life!
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The writing doesn’t stand on its own two feet, which is why these people need to game the system to be found. The offending titles are still on Amazon. No news on any takedowns yet!
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Curiouser and curiouser….
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The whole system is starting to turn rotten as more insidious ways are found of exploiting loopholes in the guidelines. What these writers don’t realise is that their work still doesn’t sell when readers take one look at titles like the abominations I found.
Amazon are looking into it and hopefully they’ll remove every one of them if they’ve broken the Ts & Cs.
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Interesting! I tried the same technique for selecting key words/phrases recently, but didn’t observe this angle. Please do share Amazon’s response (if/when you get one).
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The matter has been passed into the hands of Amazon’s ‘Quality Team’ to see if the guidelines have been abused. If so the title will be removed.
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